A dog in the stroller

The other night at 12:30am my fire alarm went off. It’s gone off about 5 times or so since I moved in and since we’ve never seen even a hint of a fire I’m never too concerned. This time before I even hit my bedroom door I could smell the smoke.

I quickly yelled to my roommate that there was smoke and then threw on a pair of jeans and a sweater. When we got into the hall we could see smoke, not a lot, but it was still there. The girl in the apartment across the hall from us came out her door, and told us it was ok it was just in her apartment. I knew before she even said it because of all the smoke that came out when she opened the door. My first thought was of her baby, obviously still inside. She was clearly flustered so I asked her if she needed help and followed her into the apartment when she accepted.

Right in the doorway was the baby’s stroller. Now I don’t have any kids and I have zero interest in children, but I do have enough sense to know that smoke is really bad for them, and if I did by some horrible coincidence have one, I would get them out of a smoky apartment right away. So it was hard for me to understand what her thinking was when I went into the apartment, saw the stroller in the doorway, and saw...the dog in the stroller and not the baby. Let’s start with the fact that if there is that much smoke, and a fire alarm going off, you grab the baby not the stroller. And if you do grab the stroller you put the baby in it and then go for the dog, not the other way around. I had to tell her to get the baby.

So she grabs the baby, and then what does she do? She hands the baby to my roommate, in other words a stranger, not to mention the fact that this is the second baby my roommate has ever held in her life. By this time our landlady came around and went in with the girl to make sure the fire was out. I took the baby from my friend and took him to the stairwell to stand by the window. I didn’t think he should stay inside because of the smoke and the fire alarm, but I thought going outside with this girl’s baby might worry her. I shouldn’t have worried about that because she clearly wasn’t worried, over the course of the next hour she checked to see where her baby was once and very briefly cooed at him. Meanwhile she had a constant watch on her dog, and when he ran away once, she was after him in a flash. Can you say unwanted baby?